What did you do in the garden today?

[WthrLady]

Those that actually use it, have a source and if an old enough customer, get a normal price. My guy charges me $4 a bale and the Chip and Joanna Cult types $12 a bale. The home and tractor stores buy it at 4 and sell it at 10-12, because there is a market and people will pay it.
One year when the wheat and barely went wrong, we were even paying $8 a bale and that's when we had donkeys that used it for FOOD! (donkeys don't eat hay, or shouldn't)
It about broke me.

 

[WthrLady]

It takes me HOURS upon hours to put up hay, plus the $12 grand in machinery and on top of that the buildings to cure and store it. I'm always surprised it doesn't cost MORE per bale. Come winter, I can charge 12$ for high protein alfalfa and grass hay and get it. As the large rounds are hard to store, hard to move, and 99% of them here are late cut/one cut cattle quality low protein bales stored in the outdoors. Some of them stored that way for years, so they're bordering on silage, which cattle love, but isn't good for horses.

 

[Sueby]

I paid like 8 or 9 bucks for my bales of straw last year. Of course I only use a couple for the chickens so I pay the Chip & Joanna prices. I also buy the bale of baked straw for the garden, that's more expensive but it's chopped & has tack so it's worth it for me. I think that was $12.

I picked quite a few cukes, I think I'll do a couple jars of sandwich sliced pickles & a couple jars of dilly beans & get it over with. I'm going to try slicing & salting this time...

 

[Birdsonghill]

I have five pallet bins that are 4X4X4 feet, but I just pile them up and let them sit... for a year or more. I'm in no hurry for making compost as I get more than enough from my chicken run compost system. I prefer the chicken run compost because the chickens do all the turning and breaking down the material. I really have no desire to turn my pallet compost piles. But, given time, nature will break it all down.

My cement mixer compost sifter sifts out the finished compost into one gorilla cart, and the larger, unfinished compost goes into a second cart. The unfinished compost will get tossed back into the run to age some more. But, like I said, it only takes me ~15 minutes to sift out 6 cubic feet of finished compost with my compost sifter. So I do that maybe a couple times a year and get more compost than I can use. Last year I was giving chicken run compost away to my neighbors that garden. They loved it.

I understand not having money to invest in a compost sifter. Since I had to buy a brand new cement mixer, my project cost me around $200. That is/was a lot of money to me. However, I was buying bags of compost at the big box stores for about $5.00 per bag. It only took me a number of hours for my cement mixer compost sifter to pay for itself. IIRC, I estimated I was making about $60 of compost per hour of machine use.

I think I hit the breakeven point after 3 short days of sifting the compost and hauling the finished compost out to the garden. Since then, everything is just a bonus. I'll probably have that cement mixer compost sifter for many many years. For me, it was a great investment.



Yep, I offer suggestions that work for me, with no guarantee that it will work for anybody else where they live.



I had composting worms many years ago, but I think I overfed them and they all died. I know worm castings are supposed to be the ultimate compost, but Dear Wife did not like the idea of having a worm bin in the house, and in northern Minnesota, it was too cold to leave them outside in the winter.

So feeding all our kitchen scraps to the chickens and getting eggs and compost from them just works better for me.

Keeping the wife happy is vital. I think most people kill their worms by not keeping it wet enough( the media ), though they will crawl out and dry up, if it gets too waterlogged. Anyway, keeping worms in the house would not go over well at my house! My oldest brother lived in Minnesota for 17 years and I got a little taste of the weather, with a snow storm in late May that was a blizzard, when I visited once! I loved the Boundary waters area and canoed and fished there, as well as in a couple other places. I went dog sledding and ate Moose and was invited to work there at a local collage, but declined the offer. That may of been a mistake! I do imagine, that composting piles work very slow there! I have one pile, in a wire bin approximately 8 feet across, that I rarely turn and just keep adding to the top and removing compost from the bottom. If I take out a lot, I may flip it ! The other piles I flip one to the next in late spring and continue to add to, as the summer goes on, and may flip again for faster results , a time or two. In the hot months , with chicken litter (before a few years ago, sheep, horse and goat litter as well) added to the piles, it made finished compost by the cubic yards in a few months! I did have about 6 working piles, but now only a few, and still got about a pickup truck load of well finished compost this past year.(* maybe two cubic yards ) Leaves make up the bulk of carbonaceous material other than coop litter for me usually. Without the litter it is difficult for me to get enough "green" materials for a lot of fast, well balanced compost. The worms provide castings for me, much less than the compost piles but it is great fertilizer! This year I have not kept up my composting, as well as in the past! But will try and catch up in the fall. BTW, we got two and one half inches of rain in just over an hour this past weekend and it has cooled down to the low 90's and only about 65 % humidity by Sunday and today may stay in the upper 80's and be downright cool for an August day! I might be able to get mire work done this week. Keep up the good work and enjoy your chickens and gardens!

 

[Birdsonghill]

No, I don't think so.... I have some cayenne peppers. They are long and skinny.... This one is short and fatter.

I should have taken a picture of them side by side so you could see the difference. I will do that the next time I pick one.

DH cut it up already and threw it in our frozen hot peppers bag. He tasted it and said it was REALLY hot.

Eta - I'm thinking Serrano peppers?

Cayenne's, come in short, long, skinny and fat strains! My favorite is Joe's Long Red Cayenne, developed in Italy, a long and skinny one, up to 14 inches long (average just under a foot) that has great flavor and medium heat! The plants cross with others often and may become something new, in gardens when seeds are saved and other varieties are present nearby. A very hot cayenne, I grew years ago was 4 inches long and as thick as a pencil. Many of the varieties from around the world derived from the simple Cayenne from the American continents. Cayenne may be yellow, red or purple! One of my staple hot pepper plants, along with Jalapeno, I would not be without! I typically, grow 7 to 8 varieties of peppers, both sweet and hot, they are at the base of flavor for many meals, rubs and preserves/pickles. I grow open pollinated almost exclusively. My opinion is that it is not a serrano type but it may be a crossbred. Looks a lot like a typical old fashion Cayenne or a Cayenne cross /hybrid or sport! Many peppers called by other names are Cayennes!

 

[Elyrian1]

I spent one winter in Minnesota. Never again. Never! And then when spring came the mosquitoes were big enough to fly off with you and they had so many ticks you couldn't walk around the dang yard without needing to check.

Note to self, when buying straw, make sure DH picks it up with his truck. Not that I'd be able to get a bale of any size into my car, but still. We have the advantage of having three feed stores within five minutes drive though.

Yesterday I got DH to weed a bit around my in-ground plants, and he even put down cardboard and mulch for me. Yay! Today, they look happier. He is able to bring home copious quantities of cardboard from his job, cardboard that would otherwise be trashed, so we're doing two good things in one. The only annoying thing is stripping the packing tape, and on the larger boxes yanking out staples. Need a lot more boxes and mulch though.

 

[Birdsonghill]

About hay and straw prices, I had one of my pastures cut and baled for hay, regularly, for a Dollar a bale up till four or five years ago(usually between 150 to 200 bales), when I sold off my sheep, goats, pony and my horse died from cancer. That pasture now almost, looks like a young forest, in four years! Now , I use trails for nature walks in that pasture, with twenty foot tall pioneer trees! Straw from my county farm supply store, has gone up from a dollar a bale to $4 each , in small orders, in the last four or five years. Good, clean horse quality Bermuda hay(what is used here the most) went from $3 to $6 per square bale in two years, in orders less than 100 bales, a few years ago. Alfalfa cost a small fortune here! The work involved and the cost of equipment would make my hay the most expensive in the world! I might should of kept getting the hay cut and selling it, but was out of storage room in my crowded sheds, anyway, and did not have the energy to work it. I wonder what it would cost me now, to get it cut and baled, if the pasture was still good? I bet, it would not be a dollar a bale!

 

[Birdsonghill]

We are always needing more mulch and compost, here. Never ending quest to fulfill! One of homesteading's important functions is recycling! We sustain recycling and it sustains us, as well! Not easy work, but we are making the decisions about our food and our health. Gardening started my composting, that started my chickens, rabbits, horses, sheep ,goats, pigs, honeybees and more! Recycling through composting and nurturing plants with mulch is a worthy occupation for our time!

 

[Birdsonghill]

Today , weeding and tilling in my plans, if all goes well. I better get at it now!

 

[gtaus]

Keeping the wife happy is vital.

Happy wife, happy life! Going on 33+ years of marriage. Don't know what I do without her.

In the hot months , with chicken litter (before a few years ago, sheep, horse and goat litter as well) added to the piles, it made finished compost by the cubic yards in a few months!

I imagine one could pile, wet, turn, and repeat in our Minnesota summer months and probably end up with some hot compost piles with finished compost at the end of the summer. But that would be more work than I am willing to put into the project. My strategy is to make more compost in the chicken run than I can use so nature can take its time breaking down the material along with the chickens turning over the litter. I think they call that cold composting, It takes a long time, but if you get to a point where you are adding more material than you take out, it really does not matter. I reached that point last summer so now I have more compost in the chicken run than I am currently taking out.

This year I have not kept up my composting, as well as in the past!

The big advantage to having a chicken run compost system is that I don't really have to keep up with any compost chores, per se. All I do is dump fresh material at one end of the chicken run and by the time the chickens scratch it to the other end, it's basically ready to be used. I just let the chickens and nature do the work for me. What is even better is that if I don't need any compost, it just sits in the chicken run continuing to feed the chickens. I don't know what the chickens find to eat in the older composted material, but they are always scratching and pecking in that stuff.

When I was younger, I tried to make some hot compost piles. But I don't think I was turning the piles enough and it would take forever for the material to break down. So I just got to the point with my pallet compost bins that I will fill them and let them cold compost. It may take a few years, but I now have 6 pallet compost bins and just top them off if the level goes down. I'll harvest the compost in a year or so, if needed, but mainly I just build a few new pallet compost bins each year and fill them up. I mainly use the compost from the chicken run right now, but I have a few compost pallet bins that are now about 2 years old and might be ready to harvest.

I like the idea of taking from the bottom of the bin and adding to the tops. I have been considering a system like that, but right now, I just harvest the entire bin when ready, run it through the cement mixer compost sifter, and throw the unfinished material back on top of a new bin. That is about the only "turning" I actually do these days.